Butterfly Pull: The Complete Guide

An Introduction to the Butterfly Pull

The butterfly pull is the most powerful movement in any stroke. At the end of your pull, you can achieve speeds higher than at any other point in any other stroke, even freestyle. It’s a big opportunity to create a lot of propulsion.

Your pull is critical for success in butterfly for two key reasons:

• The propulsion you generate during your pull is what powers you down the pool. Although your kick does create some propulsion, as well as perform other important functions, it’s your pull that creates most of the propulsion.
• Your pull also helps you get through your arm recovery, during which you generate no propulsion. Your pull should generate a lot of hand speed because that hand speed is critical for generating the momentum to recover your arms over the surface of the water with as little effort as possible. 

Although all the muscles in your upper body power your pull, your latissimus and pectoral muscles primarily do the heavy lifting. These are the strongest muscles in your upper body, and they bring your arms back and into your body while you’re holding as much water as possible. When these muscles are strong, they push backward against the water with a lot of speed. 

Other muscles of your upper body are also critical to a great pull and effective arm recovery. Your triceps stabilize your elbow during much of your pull and then increase your hand speed at the end of your pull. Your deltoids recover your arms quickly over the water, and the muscles around your shoulder blades are key for positioning your arms for a great start to your pull. 

What Are Your Arms Trying to Accomplish During the Butterfly Pull? 

The goal of your butterfly pull is to push backward against the water as much as possible to propel you as far forward as possible, as fast as possible with each stroke. Positioning your arms properly and then maintaining those positions as you move your arms backward with increasing speed is critical. 

At the beginning of your stroke, your goal is to position your arms so that your hands and forearms face backward as much as possible. That position creates as big a paddle as possible to push against the water. Think about when you paddle a canoe or kayak. A big paddle creates more speed per stroke. 

Once you’ve achieved a great paddle position with a big surface area facing backward, your goal is to move your arms backward while maintaining that position as much as possible. Keep moving your hands and forearms backward as a unit. The more you can do that, the more water you push backward against, which means the more you’ll move forward.  

Because your goal isn’t just to move forward but to move forward fast, achieving a big paddle and moving it backward isn’t enough. You also want to maintain pressure on the water with your arms by accelerating throughout your pull. You’ll start slowly and increase your hand speed throughout your pull. This allows you to maintain pressure on the water, move more water in less time, and generate speed. 

Your arm pull is all about pushing against the water as much as possible as quickly as possible and then recovering your arms as easily as possible—and then doing it all again. By creating a big surface area to pull with and maintaining that surface area throughout your pull, you’ll be able to do just that. 

Proper Hand Entry for Butterfly 

An effective butterfly pull starts with a great hand entry. In most cases, a great hand entry isn’t about doing anything special. It’s about avoiding mistakes that can make doing a great pull a lot harder. If your hands end up in poor positions because of poor hand entries, getting back into effective pulling positions is much harder. 

Here are three things to keep in mind regarding your hand entry. 

• Great hand entries in butterfly are direct. The path of your arm recovery should allow your hands to enter in line with your shoulders. Although your hands can be a little wider or a little narrower, your shoulders provide a great target for how wide your hands should be when they enter the water.  
• Your hands should also travel forward as much as possible into the entry with your hands relatively flat and fingers pointing forward. They should smoothly enter the water to prepare for the set-up of your stroke. If they’re traveling down into the entry, they’re much more likely to continue traveling down once they enter the water, preventing a patient and effective set-up of your stroke. Similarly, if your hands are coming in from the side during the entry, they’re going to continue to move after they enter the water. That’s exactly what you don’t want to happen at the beginning of your pull. 
• Your entry should be as clean as possible. Your entry shouldn’t generate a lot of splashing or noise. If it does, that generally means your hands aren’t recovering as forward as they should. They’re either slashing into the water from the side or crashing down into water. In both cases, you’ll get louder, splashier entries. 

How to Start Your Butterfly Pull  

The beginning of your butterfly pull is one of the most important aspects of your stroke and one of the most difficult to do effectively. Also known as the catch, the set-up of your stroke involves repositioning your arms so that they can push backward against the water.  

When your hands enter the water, your arms should be relatively straight and your fingers pointing straight forward. To push backward against the water, your fingers need to point toward the bottom of the pool with your elbows bent and pointing toward the side of the pool. In that position, your hands and forearms will be facing backward so that they can push backward against the water throughout your pull. 

The set-up of your stroke is all about transitioning from the straightforward position of your arms right after entry to the catch position you want to assume before pulling. The easiest way to think about doing this is that you should press your hands deeper into the water while bending your elbows and letting your elbows travel out to the side. That allows you to rotate your hand down while keeping your elbow higher in the water. Your hands will be right under your elbows with your forearm close to a vertical position. Now you’ve established a position that you can use to create a powerful pull. 

The set-up of your stroke isn’t a forceful movement. It requires very little effort. It is just a simple repositioning of your arms. Although it happens quickly, especially at high speeds, it’s a patient and relaxed movement compared to the pull itself, which requires a lot of speed and effort. Rather than thinking about catching or holding water, think about changing the path of your hands and then applying pressure to start your pull.  

Keys to Maximizing Your Butterfly Pull 

The goal of your pull is to push backward against the water with as much force as possible. The more you do so, the more propulsion you’ll create to move you forward with each stroke and the faster you’ll swim. Accomplishing this requires you to use your whole arm.  

The set-up of your stroke is critical for positioning your arms so that your hand and forearm are facing backward. When you move them backward from this position, you’ll move forward.  

A common mistake is rushing the set-up of your pull and beginning your pull prior to getting your arms facing backward. When that happens, you push down and back against the water instead of just back, which will limit the effectiveness of your pull. Setting up your pull effectively is very important for a strong pull. 

Once your stroke is set up effectively, your goal is to maintain that backward-facing position of your arms throughout the remainder of your stroke. As much as possible, try to maintain the same position of your arms as you pull back. 

To create as much forward speed as possible, try to pull directly backward because that will move you forward. As you pull in butterfly, your hands will naturally come closer together. This happens because the contraction of your pectoral muscles and latissimus muscles brings your elbows closer to your body. Because this hand motion occurs naturally, just let it happen and don’t worry about moving your arms in a straight line. At the same time, don’t attempt to exaggerate the movements of your hands. If you simply try to pull back, you’ll get the outcome you’re looking for. 

The Importance of Hand Speed in Butterfly 

The positions you achieve during your butterfly pull are critical for creating speed. However, it’s not just what you do but how you do it that’s critical. Accelerating throughout your pull is a key aspect of an effective butterfly.  

Accelerating throughout your pull allows you to maintain and even build pressure on the water throughout your pull. This pressure is critical for creating propulsion. If you move at the same hand speed throughout, you’re going to struggle to create the speed you want. The set-up of your stroke happens patiently, but once your arms are in position, accelerate throughout your pull to create as much propulsion as possible. 

The butterfly recovery is one of the most challenging parts of butterfly. To recover your arms, you must lift your upper body up out of the water and swing your arms forward. Building hand speed throughout your pull is also critical for a great recovery. The faster your hands are moving at the end of your pull, the easier it is to use that hand speed to swing your arms over the surface. If your hands aren’t moving fast, you’ll need to work harder to get them over the surface. That’s going to make an already difficult skill a lot harder. 

Build hand speed throughout your pull so that you’re moving your hands quickly by the end of your pull. The goal isn’t to just move your hands as fast as possible—you should have a steady increase in speed throughout your pull. The patient acceleration will allow you to create as much propulsion as possible while setting yourself up for an effective arm recovery. 

Setting Up an Easy Butterfly Recovery 

For many swimmers, recovering both arms over the water at the same time is the most difficult aspect of butterfly. You need to lift your upper body out of the water, and your arms need to be swung forward. Although recovering your arms can be challenging, if you can create great hand speed at the end of your pull and maintain great hand speed into your recovery, you can use momentum to swing your arms through your recovery. Using momentum rather than your muscles will m`ake your recovery much more manageable and sustainable. 

Because your arms should be straight or nearly straight during your recovery, it’s easy to assume that you should pull all way back until they’re straight before attempting to recover your arms. You might also think that you should maximize how long you pull by pulling until your arms are straight.  

But trying to straighten your arms at the end of your pull is exactly the wrong thing to do if you want to recover your arms as easily as possible. Straightening your arms will cause your hands to come to almost a complete stop. From that position, you’ll have to try to lift your arms out of the water and then move them forward.  

Rather than completely straightening your arms at the end of your pull, keep your elbows bent at the end of your pull. As you move toward the end of your pull, rather than continuing to move your arms back, focus on moving your arms back and up so that you can transition them to the surface of the water. Because this transition will be a lot smoother than straightening your arms, you’ll be able to maintain fast hand speed into your recovery. And once your arms break free of the resistance of the water, they’ll shoot forward with plenty of effortless momentum. 

Common Butterfly Pull Mistakes

The most common mistakes made during the butterfly pull involve doing the opposite of all the important skills we just discussed

A bad pull starts with hand entries that crash down, crash inward, or both. These will make effectively setting up your stroke more difficult because you’ll often rush the set-up of your stroke. Setting up your stroke effectively is key because it allows you to position your arms to create a lot of propulsion. If you start pulling too soon before your pull is set up, you won’t be able to push backward as much against the water as you would if you were more patient. 

Doing deliberate side-to-side sculling motions slows you down. Although there will naturally be some sideways motions with your hands, it’s not something you should emphasize. Doing so will reduce the effectiveness of your pull.  

Failing to accelerate your arms through your pull slows down your pull and hurts your ability to gain momentum before your recovery. You want to try to increase your hand speed throughout your stroke. 

Some butterflyers try to pull all the way back until their arms are straight. Doing so makes smoothly transitioning to your arm recovery with as much hand speed as possible more difficult. Instead, you should transition up into your arm recovery before you finish your pull. The more hand speed you have, the easier swinging your arms forward over the surface becomes. 

Exerting yourself too much during your recovery makes doing a clean hand entry more difficult.  

All these mistakes are related, and mistakes in one area can make performing subsequent skills properly challenging. Staying focused and doing each aspect of butterfly properly is critical to ensure your whole stroke flows as seamlessly as possible.